


Even when I give it all away, I want it all

by redroslin



Series: Written in the scars [1]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Dee is too good for these assholes, F/F, First Time, Frak everything the world needs more Dee/Kara, Helo is everyone's big bro, Not a college AU, POV Character of Color, Pre-Canon, Prequel, This Is Not The Happy Ending You're Looking For, Warning for choppy seas and angsty OT4 ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 22:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11610057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redroslin/pseuds/redroslin
Summary: Which is when she realized Karl was talking to a blonde with a cocky grin who, on first impression, looked like nothing so much as Trouble with a capital T. Dee liked Trouble. Trouble was cute.or: Helo introduces Dee and Kara at Caprican Military Academy. Shenanigans ensue.or: How Kara Thrace was repeatedly an asshole and still got the girl (and then lost her, natch)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Mired](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6736948) by [Walutahanga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga). 



> This was supposed to be a tiny piece of backstory for [Written in the scars on our hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11162532/chapters/24913713), and then 10K somehow happened (whoops). My feeling is that this fic should be read *after* the first few chapters of WITS; even though it's chronologically first in the series, I'm pretty sure this story works best as a flashback. YMMV, caveat lector, and all that jazz.
> 
> Warning for canon-typical religious baggage and emotional abuse by a family member.
> 
> The full content of the letters exchanged was cut for narrative flow, but if you want to read the letters when you get there, they're included as Chapter 2. (The story itself is entirely in Chapter 1, if you're not interested in the rest of the letters.)
> 
> Title from Pink's Just Like Fire.

Dee broke off mid-sentence when she heard her name and excused herself from explaining signal uptake discrepancies to tune back in to Karl's nearby conversation.

"What's up?" she asked.

...Which is when she realized that he hadn't been talking to her, but had said, "I want you to meet Dee--" to someone else: a blonde with a cocky grin who, on first impression, looked like nothing so much as Trouble with a capital T.

Dee liked Trouble. Trouble was cute.

"I'm Dee," she said, extending a hand and wishing she'd put a bit more effort into getting tonight's eyeliner symmetrical.

"Kara," said Trouble, shaking it. _She_ wasn't wearing eyeliner, of course.

Karl valiantly tried to reclaim the reins of the introduction. "Kara, this is my dorm sister, Dee. Dee, my high school best... well, this is Kara Thrace."

Kara turned to smirk at Dee. "What's Dee short for?"

"Last name's Dualla. I don't go by my first name much."

"Why not?"

"It's Anastasia."

"Ohhh. Sagittaron?"

Three months at the academy, and she had yet to figure out how to handle the inevitable questions. She shrugged uncomfortably. "Yeah."

Kara tilted her head to one side, examining Dee like a bird with a colourful bug in its sights. "You'll have to tell me about that sometime."

Really? _That's_ the line she was going to go with? "Will I?"

"Yes." And Kara was grinning, and Dee couldn't help but smile back at her, and that was when Dee liked to say she knew just how dangerous Kara Thrace was going to be.

 

* * *

 

Karl had mentioned Kara before. 'Course, so had everyone else.

As the largest military training facility in the Twelve Colonies, CMA's social scene was a melting pot of colleges and clichés. Engineering dominated the frats, while the science and comms students were known as geeks and pranksters. Cadets on the path to War College and prestigious officer training were either artsy culture types or straightlaced student government drones... or both. Meanwhile, the pilot cadets swaggered around like godsgiven rulers of all they surveyed--anything they wanted to own, anywhere they wanted to go, anyone they wanted to frak.

And then there was Starbuck.

If you thought the pilot cadets were assholes, you sure as frak steered clear of Kara Thrace. Starbuck was their diva, their demagogue, their reigning goddess. In her second year of pilot school, she already had a call sign (and nobody, _but_ _nobody_ , was given a call sign while they were still a cadet) with origins shrouded in rumour and mystique; worse, she'd earned it by breaking half the records set by veteran pilots since the Viper Mark II was commissioned.

After all, you needed a call sign to have your mark on piloting history recorded for posterity. Starbuck had crushed Adama's time on the viper pro course (both Adamas' times, in fact; Husker _and_ Apollo) and then beat Gossel's record on the attack formation drills. She hadn't yet cracked any of the Naresh raptor sharpshooting scores, but scuttlebutt around campus was that it was only a matter of time until she got around to those, too.

Everyone knew about Starbuck.

Not everyone, though, knew the Starbuck that Karl did. Before they started tearing through CMA's pilot school together, Dee knew, Karl and Kara had grown up in the same sector of Caprica City, gone to the same high school, played on the same pyramid teams. Kara had helped him hone his game--on the pyramid court and off--and he'd tutored her in chem and history for two years.

They'd never had sex, he said. The way he talked about Kara, Dee wasn't sure she believed him.

Then again, maybe she did. When he'd found Dee wandering their rez late one night in the middle of frosh week, he'd somehow identified her flat stare as the look of a person desperately in need of a friend, and had matter-of-factly brought her back to his dorm room, sat her down, and fed her packaged cookies and terrible cocoa until she'd come out of her shell. And then apparently decided to take her under his wing like the big brothers she'd lost had never done.

Caring about their baby sister's hopes and dreams was beneath the notice of Sagittaron men.

Dee was sure she would have managed just fine on her own, somehow. But it was worlds easier to be the only Sagittaron freshman at CMA when she knew she had Karl at her back.

So she should probably take him at his word about Kara. Gods knew, though, if they hadn't slept together in high school it sure hadn't been because either of them was celibate.

Since Dee and Karl had become friends, she'd had to get out of the way of so many of his late-night assignations, and played wingwoman to so many others, she'd actually lost count. And Kara was known across campus not only for her mad piloting skills but for her wild partying and indiscriminate, voracious exploits.

Dee tried not to judge. Gods knew, she herself had no basis on which to judge anyone. It was hard, though, when it seemed like everyone around her knew the score and the moves and she was just... making time. Trying to catch up on a lifetime of learning the wrong steps and following the wrong rhythms, of listening to her parents' voices, to the elders, to the manners and mysticism and _utter frakking bullshit_ of being a good Sagittaron maiden. To the people who wanted her quiet and meek and virginal and sensible and numb and afraid and never, ever wanted her to speak her mind.

So if she was the tiniest bit jealous of Karl's remarkable ease in finding bed partners... well, so sue her.

 

* * *

 

Maybe Karl _was_ trying to help Dee find a date, or at least a hook up, because he kept dragging her out to all the big campus parties.

She tagged along mostly because she didn't want Karl to mistake her shyness and social maladroitness for ingratitude. She appreciated that he thought to invite her along--really, she did--about as much as she _didn't_ appreciate the parties themselves. She could usually manage a few drinks and a couple of stumbling conversations until Karl left with his arm around someone, his casual wave across the room excusing her from either wingwoman duties or propping up a wall with her awkward brethren.

Frakking frat parties. Drinking and flirting and hook ups, and if she was a just little bit better at any of it maybe she'd be that much less irritated with the whole scene. It wasn't like she was going to learn social graces by standing around on the outskirts counting the minutes until she could leave.

Stupid pilots and their dumb pretty-people parties and their knowing how to talk to people.

'Course, if she hadn't kept tagging along with Karl, she never would have met Starbuck.

She might have been better off. But if Dee was in any way practical with her heart, she wouldn't have been the type to toss aside her family and her upbringing to join the Colonial Fleet.

Or the type to fall for the cute rockstar pilot with the devastating smirk.

But anyway. Cute blonde. Terrible pick up line. Irresistible smile. Dee was a goner, all right.

 

* * *

 

Two days later and Dee was trying to force her way through just one more chapter of interplanetary econ when a loudly slammed door and an unfortunate amount of shouting broke through her rapidly disintegrating focus.

She thought of yelling at her rezmates to keep it down, but it probably wasn't worth the effort. They'd get bored of whatever they were doing and leave soon enough if she waited them out.

Three and a half minutes later, she had to admit she'd been too optimistic. The yelling had graduated into off-key singing and was, if anything, even louder now. Whoever it was was either damn persistent, an asshole, or drunk. Maybe all of the above.

The door-pounding went up another few decibels, and enough was frakking enough.

Shoving aside a textbook, she stuck her head out into the hall prepared to glare some idiot into submission. "This is probably a foreign concept to you, but some of us need to pass our--oh."

It was Kara Frakking Thrace.

Starbuck froze with her fist poised over Karl's door, eyes glittering as she finished the--line? verse? stanza?--she'd been belting out, something obnoxious and probably risqué about silver hammers and fists of fury. Dee wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Except, yes, she definitely wanted to know.

"You again," Kara chirped happily after she wrapped up the maybe-a-chorus.

"Me again," Dee agreed.

"What are you doing here?"

"Crazy, I know, but I actually live here."

Kara mock gasped. "In this shithole?"

Graystone was one of the nicer dorms. Dee didn't bother to react to the slight. "Looking for Karl?"

"Not really," Kara said with a shrug. "Okay, yeah, I was totally looking for Agathon. Any idea where he is?"

"None whatsoever."

She watched Kara look her up and down again--approvingly?--before she met Dee's eyes with another luminous grin. "Want to come help me find him?"

Dee thought about her comms homework and the electrical eng lab she still needed to write up, then shrugged. "Sure."

 

* * *

 

They were halfway across Meaner's Green before either of them said another word.

"I've heard of you," Dee said just to break the silence, and immediately wished it could have been something--anything--more suave. Well. Nothing for it now but to bluster on. "They're calling you Starbuck."

"I know," Kara said smugly, then more cautiously: "I didn't pick it."

"No kidding."

Kara snapped, "What's that supposed to mean?" but it was all snark and no bite, and Dee was so delighted with herself for having put the flirtatious look back on Kara's face that she just grinned. "What?"

 _You're cute, that's what_ , she thought but knew better than to say. "Nothing."

"Sure."

They walked on in silence for a few strides, before Dee observed, "You didn't pick it, but you'll own it."

"Frak yeah, I will."

"Good."

* * *

 

They didn't manage to track Karl down, but they did discover--in the course of a conversation that started out fumbling but quickly became something easier--that they were both at loose ends after classes the following afternoon. Before she knew quite how, Dee found herself agreeing to meet Kara on the quad tomorrow to try the new froyo place in the Student Centre.

Froyo after class somehow turned into going to one of Kara and Karl's pyramid games a few days later, which turned into dinner with the team afterward ("This is my bestie, Dee, guys! Make her feel at home! Shots all around!") which turned into Kara puking on the front steps of Graystone Hall and crashing on Dee's dorm room floor for the night.

Nearly two weeks later, Dee looked up one day and realized that she hadn't seen or heard from Kara in nearly 48 hours, and that that had somehow become unusual.

Which is when Kara strolled through Dee's closed-but-not-locked door, dropped her bag on the ground, and collapsed onto Dee's bed with a groan. "Whatcha up to?"

Dee looked up from her textbook and her eyes caught on Kara's stupid, sunlit hair; the breadth of her shoulders; the tantalizing strip of exposed skin at her hip where her tee had drifted up against the pillows ( _Dee's_ pillows, on Dee's _bed_ , godsdamnit). Dee wanted nothing more than to kiss the smirk right off Kara's stupid, pretty face. Oh, she _wanted_.

Damn it, Dee was in trouble, all right.

 

* * *

 

"So what's the deal with you and Kara?" Karl asked her one evening in the second floor common room, while he was reading and she was looking over the calculations in the discussion section of her astrophysics report for a third time.

"Nothing!" Dee blurted ever so suavely.

"Uh huh." Karl bit into the apple he'd been polishing on his sleeve.

"No, really. Nothing's going on. We're friends."

"Friends."

"We've been hanging out a lot. I went to one of her pyramid games. We're friends."

Karl raised his eyebrows, crunched another bite from his apple, and didn't mention (though she knew he had to be thinking it) that it had been _his_ pyramid game, too--and that in the three months he'd been friends with Dee, she'd never come to one before.

"Fine," Dee shrugged. "She's Kara Thrace, I'm sure half the campus has a crush on her. Whatever."

"I'm sure they do," he said with what Dee considered a completely unreasonable degree of amusement.

"Did you and she ever...?"

"No," he said, and she was regretting having shown her hand so blatantly by asking--especially when he'd told her as much before--but then he kept talking. "But almost, once. Back in junior high. Kara doesn't really..." he waved the hand not holding the apple around in a vague gesture.

"Do commitment? Shocker."

"Do relationships of any kind. We were too close for a quick frak to make sense." He eyed Dee carefully. "Love 'em and leave 'em is kinda her M.O."

"I'm not dating her, Karl."

"No." He shot her a look that was far too knowing for comfort. "And unless I'm way off base, you're not sleeping with her, either."

She wondered if she had the word _virgin_ tattooed on her forehead, or if Karl just knew her well enough to guess. Or if, maybe, she was imagining what that look meant and he wasn't thinking about her infuriating dearth of sexual experience at all.

Figuring discretion was the better part of valour, Dee mutely stared him down.

He almost squirmed, she thought. Almost.

"You're like a sister to me. And Kara's my best friend. I just don't want--" He shrugged. "I'm not going to tell you what to do. Tell either of you what to do. Not that Kara would listen to me."

"She listens to you," Dee told him flatly.

"When she wants to." He set down his half-eaten apple on the table between them. "I just want to be sure you know what you're getting into."

"I've got both eyes open," she assured him. "I'm fine."

He shook his head, still frowning, and there was nothing else she could say, was there? Except--

"Thanks, Karl. For looking out for me."

He nodded. "Not like it's doing much good."

"No, it's good," she said softly. "Knowing you care is good. It means a lot."

 

* * *

 

She let Kara talk her into coming to the big stupid pilot party at Mills House... but ten minutes after they got there, Kara disappeared in search of alcohol and Dee wound up hovering like a third wheel next to Karl and his latest soon-to-be-conquest.

Dee had a dozen chapters of interplanetary econ to read, and a lab report to write, and this was not how she wanted to be spending her Saturday night.

Frak this. She'd go tell Kara she was leaving and then she'd get the hell out of--well, out of Mills, for a start. They weren't that far off campus. She was pretty sure she could find her way back to Graystone on her own.

She passed through a couple of open rooms filled with the usual sprawl of people drinking and doing whatever people did at these dumb parties--the pilot frats were such a mess of horny, drunk coeds that even the architecture may as well have been designed to accommodate their stupid pilot debauchery--but didn't see hide or hair of Kara. Dee was just about to give up and head out without letting anyone know (though that would inevitably lead to an unpleasant conversation with an overprotective Karl at some later juncture) when she thought she caught Kara's throaty, devil-may-care laughter drifting through an open doorway.

Following her ears into the too-clean, industrially bright kitchen, Dee found Kara--oh, gods, what now?--teasing a painfully nervous cadet in full uniform who'd made the mistake of standing next to the booze.

"Come on, kid," Kara was saying, splashing vodka into a solo cup, as Dee came through the door behind her. "You're not scared of this face, are you?"

A trio of Kara's pyramid teammates laughed from the other side of the kitchen island.

Dee couldn't see Kara's face, but she could tell from her body language as she moved into the scrawny freshman's personal bubble that she was tapping her cheek with a finger and daring the world to judge her with that patented, terrifying grin. Dee could see the boy's reaction; his sallow skin had flushed red from the edge of his hairline to the collar of his starched blues as he choked out, "No, sir--I mean cadet, Starbuck, sir--"

Kara, still chuckling, dropped the pitcher of punch she'd been pouring from and reached for the poor guy's collar. She tugged. He fell against her, catching himself on her shoulder and stuttering apologies for spilling his drink on her civvies as Kara laughed.

"Whatever. I've had worse spilled on my chest, if you know what I mean." She gestured at herself nonchalantly, at the wet spot on the cleavage of her scoop-necked tee, and shrugged. "I'll tell you what, you can pay me back. Tell your friends that you scuffed up your innocence on Starbuck," she chortled. "C'mere."

And then she kissed him.

The pyramid players across the room hooted.

Dee felt herself going cold, then hot. Her hands fisted at her sides and the pounding of her heart was too loud, too close, making itself known in her eardrums, in the pit of her belly, in her palms. She felt her jaw clench as if it happened far away, beyond her control.

And something welled up in her chest, bright and fierce and unstoppable, and that something was two words: _No. Me._

She was across the kitchen in four seconds, tapping Kara on the shoulder in the fifth. Kara broke away from the poor cornered kid and turned to face her with a grin that seemed to slide sideways in confusion as she caught sight of Dee's face--

"Shoo," Dee said gently to the poor gangly kid in his starched blues. He blushed darker, which could have been adorable if Dee had given even half a shit, and then he silently turned tail and fled the room.

Dee brought her hand up to Kara's shoulder, slid her thumb across it slowly so she could feel bare skin. Kara was hot to the touch, her upper arm silky smooth over solid muscle--and under the barely-there cap sleeve, no bra strap, because of course not, because this was Kara Frakking Thrace, after all. Dee brought her other hand up to touch, too, but then she froze.

The noise of the party was everywhere, there were a hundred people on the other side of an open door, nearly a dozen bystanders right there in the kitchen; and Dee had never done anything like this before, with or without an audience, and what the hell was she doing, anyway?

"His first kiss was with Starbuck," Kara crowed, oblivious to Dee's turmoil and far too smug, smiling into Dee's eyes.

"That's great, Kara. Kiss me." _And then mine can be, too._

"Kiss _you_?" Kara teased, bringing both her hands to Dee's hips, and Dee felt a charge run from her own palms on Kara's muscular shoulders to Kara's possessive grip at her waist. "Why should I?"

"Because you want to," she dared, her own voice hoarse and unfamiliar in her ears. "Kiss me."

Kara laughed, and the sound sent a shiver down Dee's spine; and then she was leaning in to meet her, breathing in her air, and the second before their lips met Dee knew that everything was perfect and nothing would ever hurt again.

Everything felt strange--and then it didn't. There were lips on hers, and another person's tongue in her mouth, and hands on her hips, and where even were Dee's hands supposed to go? But it wasn't just another _person's_ lips, tongue, hands. This was _Kara_ , and they had spent so much time together, desire a constant nervous hum under Dee's skin, that it had always been inevitable they would end up here.

Even if Dee was a little bit lost on where exactly here was.

It was plain that Kara, at least, knew what she was doing, and Kara in charge was so intoxicating a concept that Dee just reveled in the moment and let her take the lead.

The downside, of course, to letting Kara seize control was that you were committed to doing things the Kara Thrace way--which was to say, flying blindly at breakneck speed down a narrow canyon littered with deadly obstacles.

Good.

Dee grinned into the kiss and leaned into Kara's body, earning a tiny gasp even as she muffled her own response to the way Kara's hands seemed to be everywhere at once. Dee ran her hand up the back of Kara's neck and slipped her fingers into slippery-smooth hair, not resisting the impulse to tug a little at the fine bright strands. Her other hand crept along the side of Kara's waist. Kara grabbed at Dee's ass and tugged their bodies together, molding Kara's curves to Dee's and making her want nothing so much as to feel the weight of Kara's breasts in her hands, on her tongue.

"Whaddaya say we get out of here?" Kara broke the kiss to whisper against Dee's neck.

"That was my plan all along," Dee agreed.

 

* * *

 

They were halfway back to Kara's dorm--Dee's room in Graystone was bigger and cleaner, but it was also about twice as far away--when Kara dragged Dee down a narrow, twisty path between two hedges and then pushed her toward the back entrance to Medea Hall.

"What do you think? We could frak in lecture hall A? On top of the podium?"

Dee glanced at the fire door--probably locked at this time of night, thank the gods--and then back at Kara, whose grin was bright enough to belong to someone who'd drunk far more than Dee knew she'd had time for at the party.

"Kara," Dee said. For frak's sake, why weren't they on their way to a bed, what were they doing outside in the dark next to Medea Hall having this ridiculous conversation? She just wanted to be taking off Kara's clothes. Five minutes ago. And maybe her own. And not in public, either.

Not to be dissuaded, and apparently unconcerned with Dee's opinions on privacy, Kara continued, "On the desk, then? How about Hall B?"

"Kara. No."

Kara met her eyes, finally, and something of her manic energy fell away when she saw the look on Dee's face. She stilled and her hands fell to Dee's hips again and just--stopped there. The space between them felt different than it had before, weighty and unbalanced. "I can't--Dee. We shouldn't do this."

"Why the hell not?"

"This is a bad idea." Kara shook her head. "I'm a bad idea. You'll regret this."

"Don't care," Dee said, leaning in to bring her lips to Kara's and trying to communicate all of her certainty, her desire, her confidence in Kara, with the fierceness of her kiss. "This is how much I don't even care."

"Dee," Kara groaned. "I can't be--I won't be good for you--"

"Don't care, don't care, don't care," Dee chanted, and broke away to pull Kara after her, back down the winding corridor of hedges and out into the moonlight and toward home.

 

* * *

 

It was as if neither of them had words left by the time they made it back to Kara's dorm. Kara flung the door shut, Dee meticulously checked to make sure the deadbolt was turned, and then there was a moment where they looked at each other wordlessly and Dee almost panicked, not knowing what to do--

And then Kara was there, one hand curled around the back of Dee's neck, the other sweeping down Dee's side, landing on her hip and then resting gently but with definite interest on her ass. Kara's kiss was so intense that Dee's legs buckled and all she wanted to do was sink to the floor and curl into Kara's embrace--

But there was a bed. The whole point of the last half hour had been to get to a bed (well, and privacy, godsdamnit, Kara, but the bed was the important part now).

"Bed," Dee muttered, and then heard herself moan as she discovered that Kara had slipped one hand up the back of Dee's shirt without fanfare to unclasp her bra, and was already teasing her way across Dee's right breast with the other hand and--oh--pinching her nipple. Dee couldn't help but gasp in surprise.

"Too hard?" Kara asked softly, pausing in her pursuit of skin.

"No," Dee murmured. "Do it again."

Before she could, Dee reached for the hem of Kara's tee. She ran her own hands up Kara's back, finding dense muscle that shifted beneath her fingers. As Kara tweaked Dee's nipple again--the same one, damn it, that wasn't fair--Dee did what she'd been itching to do all night, ever since she saw Kara's cleavage in the V of her lowcut tee, and bent to kiss the swell of first one breast and then the other. Stroking the line of Kara's collar, she ran cautious fingertips over the stain left by the bumbling, overstarched cadet who wasn't Dee, and wasn't worth Kara's time and, most importantly, _wasn't Dee_ \--

"Jealous?" Kara asked softly, tauntingly.

Dee met her gaze. "Of your shirt? Yes."

Kara's eyes looked exceptionally wide and very, very clear in the fluorescent overhead light, hazel mellowed out almost to green. Dee reached up and kissed her. Kara kissed back, hot and sharp, tangling with Dee and then pulling back, leaving Dee desperate for more. Kara broke away from the kiss to suck and bite her way down Dee's throat and Dee heard herself moan as every touch seemed to travel straight to her core.

She bent her head, intending to find her way along the line of Kara's cleavage with her tongue, just as Kara grabbed Dee's ass again and forced their bodies together. They half-collided, Dee's head into Kara's chest, and Dee pulled away, laughing, only to find herself flat on her ass as Kara pushed her down onto the bed.

"Strip."

"Yes ma'am, Cadet Starbuck, sir," she said, and Kara laughed, pouncing on Dee and forcing her into the mattress with another deep, messy kiss and the weight of her body.

(It turned out Kara knew what she was doing. Who would have guessed?)

Panting for breath as Kara held her down and kissed wet tracks down her neck, Dee muttered, "Thought you wanted me to strip?"

"Shaddup and keep kissing me."

"I'm getting some very conflicted messages here," she muttered, nuzzling her way up Kara's throat.

Kara managed to wiggle one hand between their bodies so she could whip Dee's fly down and tug at her jeans, forcing Dee to twist most of the way onto her to avoid being snarled in a tangle of denim. She got her revenge by pulling Kara's shirt over her head--but then she froze up again, staring at the expanse of fragile skin laid out beneath her.

Kara would laugh if she knew Dee was thinking of any part of her as fragile--Kara Thrace, who could outpunch and outdrink men twice her size, Kara who had 5 inches on her and twice as much muscle mass as Dee ever would, but there it was--the skin of her throat and breasts and belly was pale and soft like rose petals and Dee wanted to lick and suck every inch until it was marked with bruises and bites and irrefutable evidence that Dee had been there.

She started on Kara's collarbone, above the firm swell of her breast, and Kara groaned as Dee sucked a mark onto her terrible, fragile skin.

"Dee," Kara sighed, burying her fingers in Dee's hair and arching against her as Dee sucked another bite onto Kara's clavicle, her shoulder, her throat.

Dee hummed into Kara's skin, licking the marks she'd left, then yelped in shock when Kara flipped their positions and pinned Dee under the weight of her body.

"My turn," she purred, and Dee laughed and kissed her.

The rest of their clothes were shed in a chaotic tumble of sensation and laughter. Before Dee knew it she was staring up in bewilderment at the gorgeous sprawl of naked calves and thighs and hips and wrists and waist and shoulders and beautiful, demanding eyes that was Kara.

Then Kara was kissing her again, stroking her way down Dee's body, and then there was a finger twisting through Dee's pubic hair and circling her clit. Her stomach swooped and she felt almost dizzy--breathless and small but also bigger than the galaxy, bigger than she had ever been, held and wanted and found and made new.

She closed her eyes when she came and it felt like she could fly, like she lived in a world where everything was possible, like she could hold on to the good things and never let them go and never have to be afraid.

 

* * *

 

"Gods, you're beautiful," Kara said when it was done, when they lay sweaty and soft with afterglow in the rumpled mess of Kara's sheets.

"Not such a bad idea after all," Dee pointed out with a lazy smile as she drifted toward sleep.

 

* * *

 

Afterward it seemed, at first, like nothing much had changed. There had always been a sizzle of attraction between them that neither had tried to conceal. Where Dee had once been desperate to find out what Kara's lips tasted like, now she knew, and she wanted her even more for knowing.

Everything was the same--except that after hanging out with Karl or watching Kara's pyramid team thrash the competition, the two of them would make their way back to one or the other of their dorms and attack each other with their lips and fingers and tongues.

And, oh, it was good. It was so good. Dee had never been so happy.

And then the parcel from her father arrived.

 

* * *

 

Dee checked her mailbox about once a week. Having cut all your personal ties that weren't right there on campus with you made it easy to ignore the odd school mailing or piece of junk mail with impunity, so she usually dropped by the mail depot on her way home from one or another of her basic training rotas every week. Sometimes she left it longer. This week, for some reason, she'd checked her postal box twice, and was startled the second time when her fingers hit a squarish cardboard package in the back of the mail slot.

She pulled it out carefully and then almost dropped it when she saw the handwriting on the delivery label.

> _Miss Anastasia Clairelle Dualla_  
>  _Caprican Military Academy_  
>  _Caprica City, Caprica_

\--it read, not even a proper address, could he not be bothered to look up a postal code? But the parcel had made it to her somehow, and she'd know that writing anywhere.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, she stuffed it into her rucksack and headed back to Graystone.

When she unlocked the door to her room, Kara was lounging on Dee's bed with an open book in one hand--Kara had long since shown Dee the trick to popping open the dorm room locks with a credit card and it had never bothered Dee to find Kara in her room unexpectedly, but--

She couldn't, she just couldn't. She didn't know what the potentially deadly little package might contain, but she couldn't stand the thought of Kara being there when she opened it.

She shrugged the bag off her shoulder and grimaced as she sank into her only chair. "I know this is rude and I'm sorry, but I just, I can't. You should go."

Kara was hovering in front of Dee's face, and Dee couldn't quite remember seeing her get up.

"Dee? What's wrong?"

Speechless, Dee only shrugged.

"Did someone hurt you? Are you sick?"

She shook her head helplessly, reached for her bag--where was it, what had she done with the damn thing?--there it was, right there on the floor, where Dee must have dropped it on her way in. Following her gaze, Kara picked up the bag and set it on the desk in front of Dee, where it hunched like a problematic little gargoyle and dared her to face its contents.

"I can't."

"Here." Kara was shoving something at her. When she pulled her eyes away from her bag to look, it turned out to be a curved hip flask, still warm from Kara's body heat.

Good grief. "Have you seriously been walking around campus all morning with that in your pocket?"

"Yes," Kara told her, and Dee's face must have been something else because Kara frowned down at her. "Now drink up."

"I have classes in an hour."

"Neither of us is going to class today."

Dee didn't have the energy to fight her, so she shrugged and took a swig from Kara's flask. "Frak. That's--frak."

"Bracing, isn't it?" she said with a grin, while Dee sputtered at the burn of what had to be... distilled ambrosia, maybe? "Now talk to me."

"No." She downed another swallow. It didn't improve on closer acquaintance.

"Frak that."

"It's nothing, Kara. You should go."

"So if I open up your bag, I'm going to find textbooks and pens?"

Godsdamn it. She was irritating as frak and too perceptive by half. "No. You're going to find that it's none of your frakking business."

"Hey, whoa." Kara pulled the flask carefully from Dee's shaking hand. "That's high proof. You don't have to drink it all at once. Leave some for me."

Dee shrugged and grabbed the flask back. "Go away."

"No." Kara's arm slipped around her shoulders, and Kara was steering her toward the bed, and for a while she let herself just hang on Kara's strength. Dee held still and forced herself to breathe through the tension behind her eyes that wanted nothing more than to spill over in tears she refused to shed.

A while later, wrapped in a blanket and sitting almost in Kara's lap in the corner formed by two walls and the bed, she pushed away the empty flask and muttered, "It's my dad."

"What?"

She cleared her throat and tried again. "My dad."

"Oh?"

"He sent me something."

"Is this normally cause for alarm?"

"I don't know."

"So he doesn't usually send you, I don't know, poisoned apples or explosive devices or anything?"

"He doesn't normally send me jack shit. I haven't heard from him since I left Sagittaron." She side-eyed Kara. "And, seriously? _Poisoned apples or anything_?"

Kara shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?"

"I guess." Dee rubbed her face and winced. "I must look like a wreck."

"Kinda cute, actually."

"You're a terrible liar."

"Terribly awesome friend, you mean."

"I should just open it," Dee muttered, burrowing further into the blanket and Kara's shoulder.

"Or not."

"No. I want to open it." It had been so important earlier to get Kara to leave, but she suddenly didn't mind if Kara was there for this. She just wanted it done.

"I can get it for you," Kara offered.

"No. I'll get it." Disentangling herself from the mess of the bed, Dee crossed to her desk before she could have second thoughts, pulled out the parcel, and stared down at it for a few seconds before tearing open one end with a fingernail. A metal figure and a sheet of paper tumbled to the floor. "Godsdamn it," she muttered, bending to pick up the icon.

It was a brass representation of the goddess Athena. Not the Athena worshipped by most of the Twelve Colonies, but the Athena of Sagittaron: Meek, slender, bowed beneath her headdress and cowl, wisdom yielding to the service of her divine father and brothers, warrior aspect nowhere to be found. The Athena Dee had been sworn to and to whom her life's work was to have been dedicated.

The goddess she had left behind and forsworn, along with her family, friends, career, and service, the minute she boarded the flight to Caprica.

Holding the heavy icon in her hand, Dee wished she had had it melted down and disposed of, instead of leaving it on her bedside table at home. It had seemed like a statement at the time. A way to quietly disavow the past, to leave that part of her life behind her without malice. Now she wished she could split hateful Athena's head like a squash and spew the mess across the system to spatter on her parents' door.

"Was Athena your patron goddess?"

"What?" She had forgotten about Kara.

"She's mine, too."

Dee shook her head and felt as if the booze and her brain were sloshing around inside. "I can't do this. I just can't."

Kara shrugged, a vague motion in Dee's peripheral vision. "So don't."

Dee glared at Kara, snatching the paper from the ground; paced to the window and unfolded it. Her father's messy handwriting leapt from the page.

> _Dear Ana,_
> 
> _Your mother is still heartbroken by your departure but I wanted to extend an olive branch, in spite of the devastating choices that have taken you away from us. We miss you and love you. We can only imagine how hard everything must be on Caprica, and we hope you'll come home to us soon...._

The letter went on for most of a page. She was shaking again by the time she reached her father's initials, this time with rage. The paper wobbled from her hands and Kara caught it on its way to the ground.

"Can I...?"

"Sure."

Kara was standing next to her, still mutely reading the damn thing, when Dee muttered softly, "He thinks I'm going to wash out of the military and go crawling back to them."

"He doesn't say that--"

"He does. That's what all of that noise about coming home and my place there and how _hard_ things must be on Caprica--" She choked down a laugh that wasn't quite right before bringing her voice back under control. "He thinks I must be so miserable and useless here that I'm going to crawl back and beg them--"

"Shhh, Dee." Kara reached out and wrapped her in a hug, and Dee let herself be led back to the bed. Kara propped up a pillow in the corner, pulled Dee into her lap, and held her.

This was not, Dee knew, how she would have imagined any of this going if you had asked her what it would be like to finally hear from her parents again.

And who knew that Kara Frakking Thrace had it in her to be, of all bewildering things, _kind_?

 

* * *

 

The next day, Dee dropped the same cardboard parcel in a mail slot, bearing double the necessary interplanetary postage and a brief note in place of her father's stationery.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, there was another letter.

This one came in an envelope, but the address was no less recognizable as her father's handwriting for all that he'd, for once, taken obvious care with it.

The five pages of script inside were just as bizarrely meticulous, leading Dee to imagine that he'd written and rewritten the words so many times that he'd finally recopied it in furiously tidy penmanship so there could be no possible misunderstanding.

And, oh, furiously was right.

The part that hurt the most was sandwiched in the middle, between empty bluster and tedious updates about her brothers' careers:

> _It hurts to admit my mistake because, of all my children, you were the one I trusted most. I think you know that--I thought you knew that. I trusted you with everything. I would have given you the world, if I could. I know in my heart of hearts that there must be something wrong with you, some flaw deep down, to make you act this way._

And then there was this gem, toward the end:

> _If you were here, buried six feet deep under good Sagittaron soil, I would know who you were: my proud, wise, beautiful daughter, Clay Abrams's betrothed, Stron & Grey's rising corporate star, child of Athena, child of the gods. I no longer know who you are or what may become of you._

In the wake of those cheery passages, she'd actually laughed at the line about Clay's "despair" after her "disappearance." She'd tried not to think about Clay (his broad shoulders, his warm eyes, the way he'd said her name when they'd been introduced last year at their engagement). Clay Abrams didn't miss her. He had never known her.

And neither had her family.

 

* * *

 

" _Your_ _vicious words_?" Kara quoted when she read it. "What the frak did you say between his last letter and this?"

"I told him I couldn't keep Athena's icon," Dee said carefully, measuring her breaths against Kara's, forcing herself to stillness.

 _I don't know what else to say, but I can't keep this,_ her note had read--no salutation, no well-wishes, no signature. What more was there to say, after all? She'd left, she wasn't coming back, and she wanted no part of Sagittaron's gods.

Her head pillowed on Kara's chest, she sighed and moved closer. Kara's warm hand came around her back and pulled her in, and Dee slid her arms around Kara's solid waist.

"Your father could use an aggressive lesson in reality," Kara snarled into the top of Dee's head.

"I know," she said.

But Dee was fine. She had Kara, and Kara was--well, Karl could say what he wanted, but Kara's support over the past two weeks had been the sweetest and most surprising thing.

She wasn't going to fall apart. She didn't need to, and Kara couldn't possibly have the patience for tears. She'd be fine.

So her father was doing his Deeply Betrayed By Your Existence thing. But what more could she have said? She still didn't know, and she refused to regret anything.

Except maybe being born on Sagittaron. Which had hardly been her choice, after all.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, Kara rolled over in bed and asked, "What did your father mean about not belonging to Athena?"

Dee, still coming down from the endorphin rush, managed to mumble, "Whuh?" and considered it an achievement.

Kara snorted a laugh and shoved Dee gently with her shoulder. Maybe not all that gently. Kara was so frakking entrancingly strong. "Dee. Don't leave me hanging on round two, here."

"Unnnh." How dare Kara be articulate right after orgasm. Come on.

"Right," Kara said decisively. "So what was your jackass of a paternal figure talking about in his letter? When he said you weren't Athena's any more?"

Dee shrugged her way deeper into the pillow and Kara's warmth. "Athena's a virgin goddess," she muttered into Kara's shoulder.

"No," Kara said, "she's not," in a tone that made it clear any idiot should know better.

"She is on Sagittaron." Dee sighed. "They're all virgin goddesses on Sagittaron."

"What? Even Aphrodite?"

Dee cracked one eyelid to see Kara looking at her in wide-eyed dismay. "Even Aphrodite. Will you shut up and cuddle now?"

"But that makes no sense!"

"Of course it makes no sense. It's Sagittaron logic."

"But--"

"Kara."

"Fine, fine."

She felt Kara lean back into the pillow and slowly begin to relax against her.

"...Even Aphrodite? How the frak do they explain Eros?"

 

* * *

 

They were at Kara's favourite pub a week later watching the Picon Panthers rout the C-Bucs on the big screen, since the student lounges were sure to be a crowded mess. Besides, the audio pickup on campus lagged--according to Kara, at least, and who was Dee to argue?

They managed to snag one of the high tables in the back, and Dee was making quiet inroads into their nachos while Kara and Karl went at it over Major League odds with a couple of people from their team. The other tables were full by the time the game started, packed with hardcore fans and college players and a few hapless tag alongs like Dee--the usual crowd at the Cornerstone.

Diablo had just sunk another triple and the level of cheerful chaos was up near peak decibel--someone hooting in the far corner and Dee grinning widely at Karl's tipsy roar--when Kara slammed her palms down on the table with intent.

"Are you frakking with me? Why the frak would he send Lawson in now?"

Someone yelled agreement from the group behind Dee. "Anyone but Lawson. Frak that!"

"And on a double," Karl groaned, listing forward to drop his head onto the table with a thump.

"Frakking terrible judgment call," Kara said over him. "Anders is a pretty face with a good arm, but he should never have been made captain."

"Two good arms and a fine ass! I'd give Anders the time of day," someone yelled over the end of Kara's sentence.

"Fraaak," Karl slurred into the table.

"He's trying to make friends with his team," Kara snarled. "Thinks it's Lawson's _turn_ on the court. Pyramid's not a cheerocracy. You're team captain, frakker! Act like it!"

From the table behind Dee, someone--maybe the same guy who'd wanted a piece of Anders before, Dee wasn't sure--declared, "Novice team captains are like virgins. No idea what they're doing and then they follow you around begging for a pat on the head the next day."

"Ugh," Kara scoffed. "There's a reason I don't screw virgins."

Something happened on the court and the whole room started yelling, but the din seemed far away. Dee shivered.

_There's a reason I don't screw virgins._

The crowd was still cheering. She heard Kara shout gleefully and tried to force a smile. She glanced around. No one was looking at her.

She could leave. She could slip away like she used to from all those campus parties, go back to her dorm and wait for Kara to come find her and ask what was wrong, why did she leave--

Nothing was wrong.

 

* * *

 

_There's a reason I don't--_

She wasn't a virgin any more. Maybe Kara didn't ever need to know.

And yet.

Her family only wanted her if she was a Good Daughter: devoted to the gods, loyal to her father's plans, faithful to her moiety, devoted to her fiancé, committed to a life she'd had no hand in choosing. Earnest Athena, a career in business bureaucracy, the boredom of her future marriage, the inevitability of future children, all of it closing in like a noose around her throat.

Dee couldn't have done it and stayed sane.

Kara was like a breath of sanity through a dark room clotted with dust and ghosts and dark, peeling wallpaper. Kara was sunshine and violent rain and dark moss growing over tombstones.

She was everything Dee wanted in her world.

But if Kara wanted some version of Dee who was--who was--what did Kara think she was? Who did Kara want her to be?

Dee wanted, so badly, to be the person Kara wanted her to be.

But she was a human being. She was a whole person, not a frakking Cylon doll for other people to dress up and reprogram as they liked.

She wasn't a virgin. Kara had seen to that. Karl knew the truth, or she thought he did, but Karl wouldn't tell. There was no good reason Kara ever had to find out. But, well... when it came down to it, Dee was really frakking tired of people seeing her for nothing more than whatever they wanted her to be.

 

* * *

 

"Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?" Kara asked, shrugging out of her jacket and dropping it--and herself--onto Dee's bed.

Dee paced to the window and didn't look at Kara. "What you said about not sleeping with virgins."

She thought she knew all of Kara's expressions, but she didn't know this one. "Well, yeah," Kara said finally, sounding... confused? Annoyed? "I've never slept with a virgin in my life."

"Yes," Dee said evenly, past the lump in her throat, "you have."

There was a long, awful moment in which Kara stared at Dee and Dee's stomach twisted and she felt cold, so cold.

Finally, still sprawling on the bed, Kara shrugged. "The frak, Dee."

"Kara..."

In a second, Kara was on her feet and towering over her. "Why the frak would you not tell me something like that?"

"I thought you knew." _I thought it was branded on my face._ "Or I thought, if you didn't know, it might scare you off. See! Like it's scaring you now!"

"Godsdamnit," Kara snapped, comprehension widening her eyes. "The letter from your father. Athena the _Sagittaron virgin goddess_ disowning you. Frak. I think I had a right to know, Dee!"

Dee was shaking, but she didn't dare back down now. "I don't think it's any of your business."

"Not my business!" Kara spun on her heel and paced the length of the room in two strides.

Dee almost wanted to laugh at Kara's outrage. "Did I ask how many people _you'd_ slept with?"

"Of course not!" Kara snarled. "You already knew I was damaged goods."

"Damnit, Kara, you're not damaged!"

"Is that what you think?" Kara loomed closer, and Dee couldn't tell if Kara was on the verge of kissing her or maybe punching her in the face. The latter possibility didn't scare her nearly as much as it should. "That I--that you--frak, you deserved so much better than this for your first time!"

"So much better than what?" Dee asked softly but no less intently. "Than the insanely hot sex we've been having as often as possible for weeks? Than you?"

"Yes," Kara sneered, "better than me!"

"That's bullshit," Dee breathed, "and you know it."

"It's not! Come on, Dee, I told you I was no good, I told you I--"

"You did. You told me. But it isn't true." Dee shook her head. "You're--Kara, you're astonishing, and beautiful, and completely badass, and I lo--"

"No!" Kara cut her off viciously. "No. You don't get to say that to me. You don't."

She said it anyway, deliberately, right over Kara's denials. "I love you!"

"No." Kara was shaking now. "No. This isn't--you should be out there, frakking other people. We're young, we should be having fun, living our lives, sowing our--

"Can you stop for a minute and listen to yourself? Gods, you're wrong, you're so wrong about everything. You're so important to me, and I think I matter to you, too, and you'd know it if you'd just stop--"

"Stop what?" Kara demanded. "Stop talking? Stop being so loud, Starbuck, you're too loud, you're too obnoxious, you're too much--"

"No! Kara! Gods."

" _No, Kara, gods_ , what?"

Helplessly, Dee said, "Stop making yourself crazy!"

"All right. I can stop making myself crazy. I can stop doing any of this with you."

Kara had grabbed her jacket and the door was slamming shut behind her before Dee realized she was gone.

 

* * *

 

So that was how it ended, Dee mused, lying in bed that night. Not with a whimper but a bang. All good things must come to an end. To everything there is a season.

And platitudes were invented by idiots and were no comfort whatsoever, and the fools who came up with them should be shot.

...Fools like the one who'd driven Kara away for no reason except that she never wanted to live a lie. Never, ever, ever again.

 

* * *

 

She caught Karl giving her the same troubled look for at least the fourth time that evening and couldn't take it any longer.

"All right," Dee said quietly, pushing away her exam prep. "Go to town. I'm going to answer your questions, all of them, one time offer. Go."

"Are you all right?"

She caught her breath. "What?"

Karl set his textbook aside and met her eyes. "I'm worried about you. I know Kara can take care of herself, and anyway I'm sure whatever went down last week was her fault--"

"It really wasn't," Dee said softly.

"Okay," Karl nodded. "Then it wasn't her fault. You don't have to tell me anything about what happened between you, but--are you okay?"

"I'll be fine."

"Do you want to talk about it?" he said, with a grimace that told her everything she needed to know about how much he didn't want to be offering.

"Not really. But it wasn't Kara's fault. I pushed her. I knew she'd walk away. I knew what I was doing."

"You knew what you were doing before you started up with Kara, too, and I was still worried about you then."

"I know." She shrugged. "I guess you don't have to worry about me any more."

"I, uh... Okay?"

"I'm not going to make you pick sides," she told him. "I know you and Kara have been friends forever, and I wouldn't want to complicate that. I don't expect you to..." She felt tears stinging at the corners of her eyes and gave up mid-sentence, turning away. If she could just keep them from falling, if she could get through this conversation and go back to her room and--

"Are you frakking kidding me?"

She looked up at Karl's tone. "No?"

"Frak's sake, Dee." The echo of Kara's _The frak, Dee_ rang in her ears, but she shrugged it off as the rest of what he was saying penetrated. "You're like my sister. I'm not giving you up just because Kara's too dumb to hold onto a good thing when it smacks her in the face."

"I didn't--" The tears spilled over and she was actually crying, and frak it, she was going to look like a ghoul for the rest of the next two days and there was nothing she could do about it now. She was normally so much better than this. "I really didn't smack her in the face."

Karl contrived a tissue out of nowhere and passed it across the table. "Either way, I'm sure she deserved it."

_You deserved so much better than this--_

_Better than what?_

_Better than me._

"Don't get me started on what people do and don't deserve, or we'll be here all night," she said calmly, mopping at the godsdamn tears. There. No sobbing. No repulsive blotchiness. She was fine.

"Fair enough," Karl agreed. "But Dee--"

She forced a smile. "Yeah?"

"Don't be a stranger."

"What are you talking about? I live down the hall from you. Right there." She pointed at her door, just visible before the corridor jogged out of sight to the left.

"Yeah," he agreed. "You do. Don't forget that I'm here."

"All right, all right. Don't you have a calc final tomorrow?"

His brows fell and he glanced at his books. "Yes."

"Wouldn't want you to get so invested in my personal life that you, oh, forgot to study and wound up regretting it."

He gave her another penetrating look and she knew he wasn't happy with her change of subject, but he played along anyway. "I'm so glad you're here to watch my back, Dee. What would I do without you?"

"You'd be lost without me." She balled up the tissue and smiled. "Running around getting drunk with your pyramid pals and ruing the day you forgot you were actually in college."

"What a relief that you're here to keep me on the straight and narrow."

"You're so lucky to have me."

He lobbed a ball of paper at her, and she failed to catch it and laughed, and everything was going to be fine.

Or it wasn't. Whatever.

She'd get through.

And she wouldn't regret any of it, not ever. Kara was going to be wrong about that.

NOT THE END


	2. Supplementary materials: Richard Dualla's letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A beta reader pointed out in revisions that including the full text of Dee's father's letters really pumps the brakes on the story's pacing, so I cut them. But since they already existed, if you really want to read them, here they are! I find the second letter _hilarious_ , but I'm a jerk.

> _Dear Ana,_
> 
> _Your mother is still heartbroken by your departure but I wanted to extend an olive branch, in spite of the devastating choices that have taken you away from us. We miss you and love you. We can only imagine how hard everything must be on Caprica, and we hope you'll come home to us soon._
> 
> _Your brother Eadric has just begun his residency at Stron & Grey, and Kayim started a few months ago at your alma mater, Charleston--right after you left. We have high hopes that he'll excel there just as you did._
> 
> _Your friends call asking after you regularly, and you are sorely missed, most especially by Clay. I hope this icon reminds you fondly of your loved ones on Sagittaron and that you know, no matter how harsh and unwelcoming life might prove to be elsewhere, you will always have a place here._
> 
> _Your loving father,_
> 
> _RD_

 

 

 

> I don't know what else to say, but I can't keep this.

 

 

 

> _Dear Ana,_
> 
> _I find myself horrified at your response, and then shocked that I'm horrified. I don't know how we've ended up here and I don't know what to say to you in this strange new universe where the daughter I raised and loved and gave everything has cast all of it aside in exchange for nothing at all._
> 
> _I hope you know I never expected perfection from you, but this is too much._
> 
> _In spite of everything, I had imagined a few months ago--wrongly, as is now clear to me--that you were on a purposeful voyage, seeking some kind of revelation, and that you would come home to us and to your bright future once you found answers. I wanted to believe that the gods were speaking to you and that they would bring you home wiser, braver, ready to follow through on your life and your nuptials and your career, ready to shape the future of our world._
> 
> _I was wrong. And it hurts to admit my mistake because, of all my children, you were the one I trusted most. I think you know that--I thought you knew that. I trusted you with everything. I would have given you the world, if I could._
> 
> _That you of all people would turn your back on the life we built for you--I know in my heart of hearts that there must be something wrong with you, some flaw deep down, to make you act this way._
> 
> _I expected better of you. I really did. And I want you to know, I still do._
> 
> _It's clear to me now that you won't be coming home to us any time soon--and that if and when you do, it will not be a triumphant return. At first I was angry at Stron & Grey for passing your internship to the next candidate so quickly. It pained me to see Clay's despair at your disappearance. Now it's clear to me that they, that we--your job, your fiancé, your loving family--can only be the better for your absence. We are none of us flawless, but those who strive towards higher things will always be better for having turned our backs on the demons who brought the flood._
> 
> _I will not wish you well on godforsaken, debauched Caprica. I will, however, pray for your soul. I pray that the gods can still find you among the infidels, emotional cripples, and patriotic fools of the military. I pray that Palas Athena will have you, despite your betrayals. I pray, if you are no longer Athena's in spirit or in body, that at least the light of Apollo may find you and deliver you with truth._
> 
> _If you were here, buried six feet deep under good Sagittaron soil, I would know who you were: my proud, wise, beautiful daughter, Clay Abrams's loyal betrothed, Stron & Grey's rising corporate star, child of Athena, child of the gods. I no longer know who you are or what may become of you._
> 
> _Still, I remain,_
> 
> _Your loving father,_
> 
> _RD_
> 
> _PS Please don't repeat your vicious words to your mother. It would break her heart to know how thoroughly you have betrayed our faith in you. If you have no respect for me, or for how you've dragged our family name through the mud, or apparently even for the gods, I hope at least you have some small remaining concern for your mother, and that you will not contact her. She's fragile enough without you doing any more harm._


End file.
